martyrdom · 304 · Syracuse
Lucy is one of the better-attested of these martyrs and it is not because of her passion, which is late and follows the standard pattern — the refused betrothal, the denunciation, the brothel she could not be dragged to, the fire that would not take. What is solid is the cult at Syracuse. A fourth- or fifth-century inscription found in the catacombs there, set up by a woman named Euskia, records that she died on the feast of Lucy, which means the feast was being kept at Syracuse within a century or so of the death. She is in the Roman canon of the mass, one of seven women there, and she was venerated in Rome and in Britain very early. The eyes on a dish are medieval and come from the name: Lucia, from lux, light. So does the rest of her afterlife — the feast falls close to the solstice, and on the Julian calendar it fell closer still, which is how she became the light-bringer of the Scandinavian midwinter, a saint of the Roman canon carried into Lutheran countries on the strength of her name.
Is there anything under the Sicilian legend?
An inscription, and a date that is almost certainly why the legend took the shape it did.